"Irene Bobs loves fast driving. Her husband is the best
car salesman in southeastern Australia. Together they enter the 1954 Redex
Trial, a weeks-long endurance contest of a car race that circles the entire continent.
With them is their lanky, fair-haired navigator: deposed quiz show champion and
failed schoolteacher Willie Bachhuber. If they win the Redex, the Bobs name
alone will get them a dealership, and Willie will have recharged a life
currently ground to a halt. But before any of that might happen, their official
strip maps will lead them, without warning, out of the comfortable white
Australia they know so well"
A Long Way From Home is often hilarious, heartbreaking and eyeopening, as it’s Peter Carey’s attempt to come to terms with the true history of Australia’s
founding and confront, as he’s noted, that “You can’t be a white Australian
writer and spend your whole life ignoring the greatest, most important aspect
of our history, and that is that we – I – have been the beneficiaries of a
genocide.”
The novel unfolds in alternating first-person narrative.
We meet Irene Bobs, a spunky, petite you woman married to the equally diminutive
Titch –who has an amiable personality and has dreams of running a local Ford
dealership. Still, he lives in fear of his domineering father, “Dangerous” Dan.
But being the father that Dan is, he makes a deal with General Motors Holden in
their town of Bacchus Marsh. The other narrator is Willie Bachhuber, who is
fair haired and son of a preacher and who seemly has fled to Bacchus Marsh due
a faithless wife. Or so it seems. He also brings with him his books and maps of
his beloved Germany. To help fund their dreams (and despite what his father is
doing), Titch and Irene attempt to win the Redex Trial, a round-Australia rally.
They enlist Willie as their navigator. And it’s here that Carey is able to give
the readers a vivid portrait of Australia and its dark history of racism and
destruction of the Aboriginals.
The book peters out long before the end, though. It’s not
so much what the author is trying to say, the horrors of that white people did
in taking possession of such a timeless culture (and much like Columbus, it
seems Captain James Cook was much more a devil than a hero the history books
paint him to be), but that beyond Irene and Willie, none of the other
characters seem to have a life to them –they’re rather flat and two-dimensional.
Titch is amusing at first, but become childish and stupid as the book continues
and race becomes less important than Willie’s issue about who he is and where
he comes from. And while knowing Willie’s past is important to the narrative
structure of the novel, it eventually overwhelms everything else. I’m
conflicted if this is good or bad due to what Carey was attempting to confront.
However, I did enjoy the book and Irene is such a great
character –you can’t help but love her.
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